Technology ‘Fairytale’ Comes True

The world's first sub-sea separation facility using groundbreaking new technology will start production in October, its makers unveiled today.

Speaking at global oil conference Offshore Europe, US-based technology and engineering company FMC Technologies and Norwegian oil and gas giant Statoil described their joint venture facility as "the fairytale of modern technology".

The Tordis project off the coast of Norway is expected to produce 300,000 million more barrels of oil than existing platforms - it works by carrying out all hydrocarbon processing on the platform itself rather than transporting it to be filtered.

"This [new technology] will open up a new market," FMC project manager Ann Christian Gjerdseith told offshore-technology.com.

Gjerdseith expects the big oil companies to follow suit with their own separation facilities which increases oil recovery and overall cost.

By Ozge Ibrahim